Let There Be Peace In My World

I bring peace to my world when I'm peaceful. I experience love in my reality by giving loving and receiving love. I don't have control over the lives of nations, peoples and neighbors but I can influence them. At the same time, the nations and powers in the world don't have control over me, either, so I'm capable of having my own experience of the events taking place in my world.

Let me start over because the three sentences in the first paragraph did not communicate what I was thinking.

The song title, "Let There Be Peace On Earth And Let It Begin With Me," came to mind this morning as I began writing. I realized that I don't know the lyrics to this song other than the words that make up the title. Nonetheless, the words stirred me as I reflected on my experience of peace in life. I can effect how I experience life and have cultivated peace for many years. I have a peaceful life, most of the time.

In contrast, my inner child is not peaceful. He is afraid and promotes strife as the only way to survive in the world. Peace is a luxury to him, one that he doesn't feel he can afford until he has millions of dollars, excellent health, millions of friends and fans along with an unquestionably secure source of income. Until he has those things, he strives to get them. Of course, that doesn't leave much room for peace, satisfaction, pleasure, happiness or fulfillment because those feelings promote contentment more than striving to achieve something better. He believes that he must pretend to be someone he's not in order to convince others to like him, pay him and support him, so he doesn't want to relax or enjoy the present moment. He's all about making the future better and more secure, which is about sacrificing the present for a future reward. It's difficult to experience peace in his drama.

I think of the Catholic image of the crucifixion of Christ as a symbol of this daily sacrifice required to secure a rewarding future. The Church projects the rewarding future into the afterlife, Heaven and all that, since the early Church's predictions of Christ's imminent second coming proved to be incorrect. So, the sacrifice each day is meant to secure a rewarding afterlife since it does not guarantee health, wealth, success, love or happiness in the current life. My inner child was indoctrinated by the Catholic Church and believes that he must sacrifice himself because he is defective somehow and that's the only way God will reward him with a good life and a good afterlife.

I prefer to experience peace, happiness and fulfillment in being who I am in the present moment. I don't know how much impact I have on the world around me but I get to have peace as part of my experience of life.

Marking Independence And A Move To The Water

I purchased a house in Port Townsend, Washington, and am in the process of closing the deal with the seller. Everything is in place for my wife and I to take possession of the house next Monday, June 23. I thought I would be happy when I reached this point in the sale because I want to live there so much, but I haven't settled into the reality of the purchase, yet. For the past two months, I have focused on getting my current house ready to sell by repairing things, finishing landscaping, clearing clutter, giving away items we don't want to move and packing winter clothes and other things we won't need until we get there. We have also been working hard to keep all the parties involved in this sale communicating with each other and with us so that we close the sale on time. In addition, both our children have been home the past two weeks and we've had a wonderful time being a family again, but all this adds up to a tremendous amount of focused activity. So, I haven't caught up with the fact that I'm just days away from taking possession of the house in Port Townsend and we will likely move there around August 1.

Now that I think about it, I realize that I am happy about the purchase and I am excited to have the opportunity to move there later this summer. In the hustle of activities, I lost sight of what I'm actually accomplishing with all the busy work I'm doing. I still have some boxes to go through and some things I want to give away or trash before we move there, but I'm almost finished with the clearing and cleaning stage of the move.

Today, I go with my daughter to the Motor Vehicle Division of New Mexico State Government to transfer the title of her car to her so she can register it in California as she establishes her home there. I also will help her sign up for her own health insurance plan and automobile insurance policy, marking her transition to being an adult, now. This is actually a significant moment in our lives even though I haven't really taken notice until right now. She's really been living on her own for the past two years but these little changes mark a change in our relationship. She is independent, now, and taking responsibility for her own life. However, there are these steps we must take to enable her. I have been too busy to notice what this means up until now.

I am grateful that I took time to write this morning. I have brought into the forefront of my consciousness the point of all the activities with which I've been so fully engaged these last few months. My daughter is an independent adult starting out on her career path and we're moving to Port Townsend, Washington, to live by the ocean and enjoy living on the temperate, moist, green Olympic Peninsula.

Waiting For The Rain

This morning, the sky is clear and the sun is shining. That simple sentence would have been a prescription for a happy day when I was a child in Ohio. After living in the desert for 33 years, though, the description is not enticing. I look for clouds, now, hoping to feel moisture in the air and be comforted and nourished by the rain. It's amazing how differently I feel about the clear, dry air in the desert after living here for all these years. I used to think of clear sunny days as the most beautiful weather but have grown to appreciate how lovely and nourishing cloudy, rainy days actually are.

I'm moving the Port Townsend, Washington, where clouds are commonplace and rainy days are normal. I look forward to feeling the nurturing rain and becoming acquainted with cloudy weather again. I may eventually come to the place where I think of clear, sunny days as beautiful weather, again.

I notice in the ten-day weather forecast for Santa Fe that thunderstorms are forecast for next weekend. I look forward to the clouds, the moisture in the air and the chance that it will rain on the dry, dusty landscape I still call home. Just knowing that there's a chance of rain next weekend makes these bone-dry days tolerable. Just this morning, while I was running in the greenbelt, I thought how wonderful it would be if it would rain during our open house next Sunday. I like the idea of people, who are looking at the house, seeing it when the skies are filled with clouds and the air is cool with the possibility of rain. What fun that the forecast matches my wish.

I have a busy week ahead that no longer seems daunting because there's a chance it will rain at the week's end. I will be busy while I wait for the rain.

Spirit Talk: A Home By The Water

You will have a home by the water. I never dreamed of living by the water when I was alive. I wanted a bigger house and a newer house in a nicer part of town, but I didn't dream of having a home by the water. I don't think anyone in my family's lineage had a home with a water view like you will have. As you know, your mother and I never learned to swim as children. We weren't connected to the water the way you are.

I keep track of you and your family as much as possible. It's interesting to see how far you've grown from the small world that your mother and I shared. You always seemed intent upon pushing beyond the boundaries that we kept so religiously and I am amazed at the difference between your current world and the one we shared when you were a child. Oh, I was concerned about you all right. I didn't understand how you'd survive in the workforce with such curiosity and idealism. I felt sure that you would not be able to work at a secure job for a company and I was right. However, I didn't see the possibilities that you saw or notice that many people thrived living a creative life, exploring art, music, spirituality and communication. I saw only limited opportunities for making money in my world, where others had the money and I had to do what they wanted to get some of that money from them. I didn't see the symbiotic relationship between employer and employee or the creative possibilities that you did.

I am impressed by how hard you've worked to break free of the world we showed you. It almost seemed as though you knew there was a bigger world out there that you wanted to explore, so you didn't want to be constrained by the limitations of our world. There were so many places you could have stopped to rest along the way, like settling into academia as you first thought you might, teaching high school students physics and science for another decade or so, building a practice in hypnotherapy and past life sessions, or even designing websites for a while longer. You weren't satisfied, though, that you had really discovered who you are or knew what you wanted when you explored these activities, so you moved on.

For the moment, your life is almost entirely centered on moving, as you take care of all the details of buying a house, selling your current house, arranging for the move to Washington, clearing out clutter and getting rid of things you no longer need or want and packing the things you're taking with you. It must seem natural to you to have this focus on moving because you've been moving all your life.

However, this move is different. You know yourself and are clear that you want to create music, among other things. This move is your opportunity to leave many of the old dreams behind so you are free to create. And you want to explore this new world in view of the water. Port Townsend is not a factory town and there are few jobs to be had there. But there's plenty of room for creative exploration and an entire community of people who are exploring that world, too. I am happy that you and your family found ways to explore and be yourselves. All this packing and preparation for the move is like your graduation exercise, but this time you're graduating from the hierarchical world of becoming into a transitional way of being; being by the water.

Anchors Away!

Everywhere I look, I see anchors to my past. The books on my shelves, the CDs in my cabinet and the file folders neatly lining the drawers of my desk are remnants of something that mattered to me a while ago. I have to keep some of them, like the tax returns and bank statements I retain for my IRS records.

There are a number of books that I bought quite a while ago that represent what my interests were when I bought them. If I walked into a bookstore today, I can't imagine that I would purchase many of them. Yet, I've carried them with me or stored them on my bookshelves for years waiting for a moment when I feel compelled to read them. Many of them I have read already and hold onto in case I want to read them again. It's curious that I seem so inclined to maintain this direct link to my past.

I also feel reluctant to bring consciousness to this book collecting habit. In truth, though, it's my inner child who resists being conscious of what I'm doing. He has a strong preference for me to hold onto these books, as though my life were dependent on them somehow. I know that he discovered a way to experience some success and accomplishment in childhood through school, getting good grades, reading books and completing assignments from teachers. He imagined a life in academics as the perfect way to show the world that he could succeed in life and prove that he wasn't defective or broken. I was disillusioned with the academic world but I imagine that my inner child still wants to live there where he experienced so much success and received so many honors. On those shelves are displayed his dream of a return to glory in the academic world, whether by getting more degrees to earn my way into university teaching or by writing a cutting edge book that will convince thousands of people of my brilliance in whatever subject I choose to express myself.

The reason I'm writing about all the books on my shelves is that I want to get rid of as many as I can. When I say that I want to get rid of some books, I am convinced it will be easy to do. However, when I go to my bookshelves and look at the books, each one seems to have meaning for me. When I open the book and read a few pages, I get interested in the story, the investigation or the information that is conveyed and imagine that I would enjoy reading the entire book one of these days. At that point, I usually place the book back on the shelf and am back where I started.

I have given away many books over the years, but I still seem to accumulate them. The truth is that I don't actually read very many books in the course of a year yet I imagine that I will read more next year. I realize that's my inner child pushing to get me back on his preferred academic path. I don't have to go along with his program. I think I'm ready to let go of a few more of these books, these anchors to his old survival dream.

Embracing Change

During spring, the field mice come into the house. It happens when the babies mature and leave their nest to find a place of their own to live. Fortunately, the garage seems to be the most accessible area of our house so they come into the garage, probably drawn by the smell of the bird seed I keep there. I keep a live mousetrap, which has a cheese puff and some sunflower seeds in it, in the garage to catch them before they actually get into the house. I also keep a similar live trap in the metal storage shed in the yard because they like to sneak in there as well.

Yesterday morning, I checked the traps and found a mouse in each one. I brought the traps to my car and took the mice to a field about three miles from my house where they can live happily and well, without interfering with my life in my house. When I placed the traps on the ground and opened the trapdoor, the mice did not leave the cage. They remained huddled in the back of the cage, trying to hide from me. Some mice run out of the cage as soon as I open the door, but not these mice. One of them, in fact, clung to the cage with all four legs, trying to remain in its relative safety even when I tilted the cage and shook it to get the mouse out. When the mouse was finally shaken free of the cage, it crouched on the ground as still as possible, hoping to avoid being seen. When I walked away, it ran into the underbrush.

I think that I'm like that mouse sometimes. When events and changes in life open a new door for expansion of my limited reality, I often hold back, reluctant to walk out into the field of experience now available to me. I cling to my cage as if the intelligence that opened the door for me is trying to hurt me. It's a primitive fear, one that was programmed into me early in life. It's the defining characteristic of my inner child, who expects me to fail and who thinks that the universe is trying to trick me into hope so it can dash my dreams into a thousand pieces. When opportunities arise, my inner child clings desperately to his known world, regardless of how much he hates it, much the same way that the mouse held onto the cage with all its might. It's especially interesting to watch the mouse cling to the very cage it so frantically was trying to escape only minutes before.

Change is an integral part of life. I can try to maintain the status quo but children mature, people grow older, circumstances change, the economy fluctuates and relationships evolve, regardless of my feelings about it. I am thrilled by some changes and resistant to others, but my experience of life is fluctuation and, hopefully, maturation. I don't like to have friends die but they sometimes do. I didn't want George W. Bush to become president of the United States but he did.

In this spiritual universe, the opportunity for me is to remember the mouse clinging to the side of its cage when I tried to free it. I trust that the universe is benign and that life changes in ways that support and nourish my purpose in being here. In other words, each moment is really like an experience of being released from the cage of my past. I can cling to my cage out of fear, as my inner child would have me do, or I can run out the door and start exploring the new spacious reality opening before me. Everything I need is out there somewhere even if I don't know where it is, yet. I might as well embrace my freedom since I can't stay in my cage, anyway.

A Lull In The Whirlwind Of Change

I live in a spiritual universe. Life does not consist of random events to which I respond and adapt, as scientific materialists believe. The world in which I live is fluid and changing, subjective and adaptable, while still having the appearance of being the same for everyone. My reality and my experiences are unique although I can't know for sure exactly how they resemble or differ from the realities and experiences of others. I have observed reality changing and shifting as my perception and expectations have altered and grown over the course of my life.

I am selling my house in Santa Fe in preparation for moving to Port Townsend, Washington. I have purchased a house in Port Townsend and preparing for the move but my house in Santa Fe hasn't sold yet. At least that's the way things seem to be this morning. I can think of this piece of information as a fact, fixed in a concrete reality that everyone shares, which makes me feel powerless and incompetent. If I do take that approach, what can I do to overcome a sluggish housing market and a lack of qualified buyers?

No, I consider reality to be much more fluid than that. I have done everything I can to ready my house for this sale and am in the process of sorting my possessions so I can clear out old stuff that I don't want to take with me to the Northwest. The fact that my house hasn't sold yet serves my wish to get rid of stuff before I move, so the house remains on the market right now. It will sell at a good time and at an appropriate price to enhance my experience of change and transition into a new life in a very different climate. I still have shelves, boxes and closets of stuff to sort and clear, so the sale serves my wish to transform my life. I don't want to drag my history with me. I want to clear the way for a real shift in focus in my life. I want to bring music to the foreground and let the science teaching, web design work and my search for a meaningful career recede now, which means I want to get rid of the papers, books and anchors that keep me focused in those ways. I want to move on and this is a great opportunity to change my focus.

The house hasn't sold and I'm taking advantage of the lull to rid my life of historical anchors that hold me in the past. I celebrate this lull in the whirlwind of change that has occurred since we decided to move to the Northwest to be by the water. I happily use this time to sort out my stuff and decide what's appropriate and supportive of my new life.